NOW serving a 28-month sentence, former Whitehill Town Council clerk Patricia Bell was ordered to sell the family home within six months - when she appeared at a compensation hearing at Winchester Crown Court last Friday - to pay back some of the £162,000 she stole from the council during the six years she worked for it.

However, the council will only get £70,684 - half the value of her home in The Sands in Farnham - when it is sold, as the other half of the property belongs to her husband, so it is investigating ways of getting the rest of the stolen money from Bell's civil-service pension which matures next year.

For the full story see this week's Bordon Herald